The relationship between learning disability, intelligence, and paired-associate learning

Learning disabled (N = 45) and non-learning disabled (N = 39) third and fourth grade boys and girls were compared in four paired-associate situations. The situations respectively measured learning, memory, exemplar learning, and transfer. Intelligence was measured with the WISC-R. The data were nonnormal in distribution, and the results were thus analyzed parametrically for intelligence and group. What appears to be an interaction occurred. Intelligence facilitated performance for normals on the memory task but had a deleterious effect for the learning disabled Ss. The learning disabled high intelligence group, however, performed significantly better than the other groups on the exemplar and transfer tasks. These findings are discussed in terms of conceptualizations of learning disability and the nature of intervention strategies. In addition, concern is raised for the validity for research with these children where the IQ factor is ignored or covaried and not directly investigated.